I am a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where I founded and direct the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space architecture. My background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures and other support systems for applications in space and extreme environments on Earth. I have recently written a new book titled "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax". It can be previewed and ordered at www.climateofcorruption.com. Additional information about my book and views can be found on my YouTube address: http://www.youtube.com/climateofcorruption.

How Can I Get Some of That Anti-Global Warming Big Oil Money?

It seems we keep hearing that scientists who challenge claims that our planet is on fire fueled by fossil energy are lackeys of a heavily funded disinformation campaign underwritten by Big Oil, Big Coal, and other Big Spenders. Notable authority on this conspiracy, Internet pioneer, Academy Award Oscar winner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Arnold Gore warned about this last year in a Rolling Stone article: “Polluters and Ideologues are financing pseudoscientists whose job it is to manufacture doubt about what is true and false [and] ….spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media.”

Given that the mercenary climate skeptic cadre appears to be awash in ill-gotten carbon footprint-stained gains, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that such evil organizations have never seen fit to offer me gobs of money. After all, I frequently write articles arguing that there is no basis for climate alarm and critical of charities essential to support otherwise unsustainable “green” energy fantasies. Why should I, alone, miss out on those pay offs? Sure, I have repeatedly opposed subsidies for all other energy providers as well. Still, it just hasn’t seemed fair to be passed over with such harsh neglect.

Frankly, this didn’t really bother me all that much until I recently read that the Heartland Institute received “shocking” contributions from nefarious donors. This was revealed in confidential information illegally obtained and distributed by renowned “mainstream” climate scientist Peter Gleick who received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and chaired the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Task force on Scientific Ethics. It seems he had a simultaneous lapse of both attributes. And by the way, that’s the same AGU that released a famous conclusion based on Ouija board survey methodology that 97% of all scientists believe that global warming is a serious, human-caused curse.

At first, it appeared that Heartland’s fossil industry-funded debauchery was much worse than many of us could have possibly imagined…an astounding gift of $25,000 from the Koch Foundation alone… over a short period of just ten years! Well okay, that money was actually earmarked for a health care newsletter rather than to advance their insidiously skeptical positions regarding a looming climate catastrophe. Nevertheless, that suspected salacious liaison was titillating enough to get some prominent press pundits panting.

If that wasn’t bad enough, another forensically and factually flawed document in the batch, which was falsely attributed to Heartland, put the contribution amount at $200,000. But then, why quibble over what amounts to little more than an innocently misplaced decimal point? And as warminista sensationalists apparently believe: numbers, schlumbers…what does it matter so long as you get the big message across?

Think rising oceans for example. In a December 6, 2005 presentation to the AGU, NASA Goddard Space Institute head and long-time Gore advisor James Hansen predicted that the Earth’s climate was reaching a human-caused tipping point that will cause sea levels to rise as much as 80 feet during this century. Not one to understate scary probabilities, this was more than 40 times higher than even the upper worst case end of what the most recent alarmist U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summary report has projected.

Absent any known basis for this, I’m unaware of any criticism of that remarkable assertion from the AGU or any other of those self-proclaimed mainstream climate organizations. Also, what about unsupportable claims regarding imperiled polar bears, a human CO2 -caused Himalayan glacier retreat, and increasing global warming-induced hurricane threats…to name only a few examples? Have you heard any vociferous rebuttals from established bastions of scientific authority?

Didn’t think so.

Maybe that’s because there’s no record that the sources received any money from ExxonMobil or their conspiratorial ilk. No, it all came from us through tax money we generously provided to “get the truth”.

Perhaps you can imagine my relief to learn that Heartland didn’t get any ExxonMobil money after all…that I wasn’t the only one they overlooked. In fact it turned out that most of Heartland’s budget was provided by innocuous and rather boring private donations and grant sources. You gotta admit that it’s pretty chintzy for Exxon not to give at least something to them…an organization that according to the Associated Press is “one of the loudest voices denying human-caused global warming, hosting the largest international scientific conferences on climate change.”

Wouldn’t you expect Exxon and other fossil confederates to be at least a little charitable to a not-for-profit entity that has been dubbed “the ideological center of the denial movement”? Geeze, they sure are providing a great deal of bang for the buck in what …as Al claims to be…manufacturing a lot of doubt about what is true and what is false.

Consider that about one-quarter of their total $4.4 million 2011 budget that Heartland devoted to climate research dissemination activities is barely a rounding error in what other opposing-view non-profits spend. For example, compare this with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection which reportedly netted more than $88 million in 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council, which reportedly took in more than $95 million in 2011 operating revenues, and the World Wildlife Fund that raised more than $238 million last year.

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As he was throwing out numbers he should also include the tax brakes and subsidies for oil and coal. The numbers are staggering in comparison to anything green. The money to the green side is a drop in a oil barrel.

There are tax breaks for business, not just the oil, coal, and gas business. However, oil, gas and coal generally make profitable returns. They pay taxes. They contribute. Alternative wind and solar is a dead loss save in rare applications. It contributes little or nothing whilst its costs to the taxpayer are immense.

The money given to green garbage is not a drop in the bucket as Mr. Bell so kindly explained.

Are you honestly serious? Apple and the big tech companies get the exact same subsidies as big oil. At least big oil employs Americans, unlike your precious Apple, Fred. Also Fred, global wind energy accounts for less than 1/2 of 1 percent of total energy output. I don’t know about solar but it is not much better.

@Larry

Larry excellent article and the email you shared from the scientist was great. Environmentalism needs to be retaught and rethought. Individuals can take it upon themselves to care for the environment. There will always be people and businesses who neglect the evironment, but most will not because preserving it is in their best interest.

I consider myself to be environmentally conscious, I just don’t want to pay the stupid tax.

Nonsense, money invested in green energy does create jobs. Solyndra’s great achievements were rendered moot when the bottom dropped out of the price for a commonly used material in solar cells. Those jobs were real, the innovation was real, the patents are real.

Of course it creates jobs, but more of the variety of digging holes in the morning and filling them in in the afternoon. When the public money runs out, so do the jobs. If the government had invested the money in training electrical engineers, with the money gone there would be a number of electrical engineers to build all sorts of new items.

Distort much? Here’s what Hansen actually said on Dec. 6,2005: “The equilibrium sea level response to 3°C global warming is about 80 feet, based on the history of the Earth. The fact that the ice sheet response time is probably hundreds of years is no solace to coastal dwellers, because they will be faced with irregular incursions associated with storms, and will need to continually rebuild above a transiently rising sea level.” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Keeling_20051206.pdf

And what is it you are insinuating about the polar bear population. They are a threatened species: http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html How about the Himalayan glaciers? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8355837.stm I notice that Bell compares Heartland, which is purely a propaganda operation, with environmental groups that have many programs pertaining to many areas of interest. That would be like attributing the budgets of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal to Heartland. I’d advise Larry Bell to hit up Big Oil for some money if he’s doing this deception and spinning for free.